Ailing national carrier Air India as part of its aggressive revenue optimisation effort has for the first time opened up its maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) facilities for a private airline. The state-owned airline has on Wednesday signed an MRO service sharing agreement with SpiceJet, the country’s second largest economy airline in the private sector.
Under the agreement, Air India will provide support to SpiceJet on maintenance of the latter’s B-737 aircraft and landing gear replacement at its engineering unit Air India Engineering Services Ltd’s (AIESL) MRO facility at Nagpur.
The new service alliance will necessarily mean additional revenue for Air India while it will also enable SpiceJet to not only avail the national airline’s state of the art facilities and engineering expertise but also can save money and extra miles, said an Air India statement on Wednesday.
“Spice jet will save nearly 25 per cent of total maintenance cost,” said Arun Kashyap, Vice President, engineering and maintenance, of SpiceJet.
While, AIESL chief executive officer H.R. Jagannathan said that Air India is always ready to be a part of the make in India programme.
“Air India has world class MRO facilities and any one can use the state of the art facilities. The aviation sector is growing rapidly so in coming years MRO facilities can be used efficiently,” Jagannathan added.
Air India, which services all its aircraft in-house with its own engineering facilities, however provides ground handling services of many airlines in many cities in India for the last several years. The national flag carrier, which has set a turnaround plan targeting 2018, had reported a modest operational profit for the first time in a decade, in fiscal 2016.
Posting an operational profit two years ahead of the target as per its turnaround plan was significant for Air India and this was the results of a lot of operational efficiencies that it could bring in its services and other functions in the last couple of years.
BW Reporters
Unnikrishnan is currently Senior Associate Editor with BW Businessworld at its Mumbai Bureau. During his two decades long journalistic career, he has received several media awards and recognitions. His articles on healthcare, life sciences and intellectual property rights (IPR) have been republished by several international blogs and journals.
